A new gold standard?

Joseph Stiglitz has a good piece in Vanity Fair about the possible repressions of the American financial meltdown on both the global economy and Americas philosophical place in the world. Its worth reading in its entirity, but a little thing in it caught my attention [emphasis is mine]:

The dollar has long been the reserve currency—countries held the dollar in order to back up confidence in their own currencies and governments. But it has gradually dawned on central banks around the world that the dollar may not be a good store of value. Its value has been volatile, and declining. The massive increase in America’s indebtedness during the current crisis, combined with the Federal Reserve Board’s massive lending, has heightened anxieties about the future of the dollar. The Chinese have openly floated the idea of inventing some new reserve currency to replace it.

My understanding was that the use of the dollar by foreign banks was intended to replace a global gold or silver standard. how does one creat a currency that is able to act as a solid reserve currency out of whole cloth, unless you go back to some level of direct conversion between resources and monetary units. Is this basically what China wants to do (and if so how) or has my lack of Economic knowledge struck again?

Common econ kids I'm looking to you to explain this one...